11 May 1968
How come no media outlet dusted off this 1968 Irish number one for their 2024 news packages of Simon Harris now running the country as Taoiseach? Because they’d be mortified, that’s why! (Also, there’s its cruel term about mental ability which we rightly no longer use.) Having said that, you could imagine it filling the floor at a Young Fine Gael shindig. Those crazy cats!
Don’t you get too smug, though. If your parents or grandparents were out socialising in the Ireland of 1968, then as well as shifting to the maudlin sounds of showband slow sets they were bopping sweatily to ‘Simon Says’, a cover of a naff US bubblegum pop hit about a children’s game. Not only that: they were probably also doing the actions. Scarlet for you!
And there’s more! That original American version, by the punch-me-in-the-face whimsically-named 1910 Fruitgum Company, was also in the Irish top ten at the same time as Dickie’s chart-topping iteration. So that’s May 1968, when student protests and social unrest shook the world, but Ireland was going buck-wild for ‘Simon Says’, an infantile ditty about doing what you’re told.
